The Tropical Fruit Forum

There's even a semi sweet sour orange. Two I think. If they have the disease resistance and cold hardiness of sour oranges and it seems like they do those would also be excellent for crossing.

I think cold hardy would be similar to meyer lemon or a grapefruit in since lemons are relatively cold sensitive. Sour orange is more cold hardy than grapefruit even. I'm not sure how low the can tolerate the teens for short periods definitely probably 10 degrees fahrenheit at night.

I'm thinking of semi warm areas like Georgia or Alabama. Dunstan grapefruit will grow in those places. Or Italy, Spain etc areas where it's too cold for most citrus but still mild. Maybe coastal France or something. Even Florida the occasion cold spell knocks out a lot of citrus types.

Quote from: 1rainman on April 30, 2023, 08:12:22 PM

Actually I just saw on the website in Europe they have a lot of meyer lemon crosses.

Hi 1rainman, do you have a link?

https://www.oscartintori.it/en/prodotto/hybrid-13-meyer-x-chinotto-sour-orange/

Actually I just saw on the website in Europe they have a lot of meyer lemon crosses. One of them is with a dwarf sour orange. The hybrid is very cold tolerant and fruit is good for cooking or lemonade type drinks with orange flavor. It is dwarf enough to grow in a container.

While not as cold tolerant as poncirus this would be a good start for breeding. The fruit is edible. Maybe cross with Florida 119, Dunstan grapefruit or satsuma or something. And put all those in the mix. Grow it in Georgia or north Carolina where it's fairly warm but colder than most citrus grow or do them as container plants or greenhouse. The end result I would buy. The poncirus would need to be highly diluted such as using fl 119 and Dunstan grapefruit in the mix. But then crossing with more edible stuff like meyer lemon, satsuma etc. Then some sour orange in the mix. Maybe cold tolerant pomelo in the mix. That sort of thing. Mostly dwarf.

Meyer lemon is the best all around plant. Fruit is only slightly bitter when fully ripe. Edible right off the tree. Very small dwarf plant especially the dwarf version grows well in containers. Decent cold tolerance. It would be the one I would cross in the mix most often. Meyer x desert lime in the mix would be good but seems a lot of those are misidentified desert lime crosses with a grapefruit or something. Seems hard to find the real thing. Desert lime would be good in the mix for disease resistance and cold tolerance. Poncirus crosses unless it's really diluted in the mix don't seem worth eating.

Lemons, including meyer even though it's some sort of hybrid lemon, lemons have fairly good hlb tolerance. Desert lime has really high tolerance. They still get infected but they show very little symptoms. The meyer x desert lime is about the same as the desert lime in tolerance.

Similarly meyer lemon is fairly cold tolerant to begin with and the desert lime has high cold tolerance and so on so it's a really good hybrid.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.1019295/full

The plot thickens. Seems it has lime in it's background.

With grapes self pollinated seeds have less vigor due to inbreeding. Don't know if citrus is the same. You can get interesting results selfing for breeding purposes. Once you cross the inbred strain again vigor is restored. But self pollinated seedlings are generally less desirable. This is why they emasculate a self fertile variety take away all the pollen when breeding. It's just too complicated of a process. It's easier to use females or a hermaphrodite that is mostly female and doesn't self pollinate much. Clones are good but then they lack genetic diversity this a disease like hlb can wipe them out. Maybe citrus is different.

I sent a pm again. I really want these seeds

I had the improved meyer. There was only maybe three or four seeds in a fruit maybe less. They turn yellow and appear ripe and seem like a sweet lemon. But some of them when left on the tree further get a slight orange hue and that's when a little of the tangelo flavor comes out.

There's a grove of grapefruit crossed with some kind of sour orange hybrid I guess in Florida. The original wild grapefruit tree was huge a big shade tree better than a a average grapefruit. It created a grove of hybrids. The park chopped the original grapefruit and many fruiting hybrids. There's still a grove in one section but no fruit. Maybe the trees aren't old enough.

Outwardly they look similar to ugli fruit or maybe orange like. Orange flavored but close to a meyer lemon in bitterness. Edible but maybe similar to a grapefruit being tart. Barely edible unless sugar was added but no off flavors much better than poncirus.

They resist disease like hlb. So I'm guessing some sour orange is in the mix. I don't know. The grapefruit shouldn't be resistant but it seemed to be.

As a whole animals don't bother citrus because they can't peel it. Sour orange is so much better than poncirus in terms of edibility.

These ugly fruits are basically like sour oranges but not as sour. I assume they might be crossed with the older grapefruit because of the disfigured fruit usually is from such a hybridization but I could be wrong.

I want these seeds

Do they really grow that fast??

It would take 6-8 years for an apple/pear whatever tree to get to that size

With proper soil and watering there are many plants that grow at break neck speed in Florida.

We had a Florida peach that grew larger than that in five years as well as a live oak. It looks like 100 year old oak now but it's 20 years old. It grew faster than wild ones because we dug a giant hole and filled it with potting soil when we planted it.

My grape from seed is close to 15 feet tall in one year. But grow stuff in sand most stuff will barely grow.

Get Rio red. It has the same cold hardiness and is the best grapefruit. It's like ruby red but slightly better tasting. I think less acidic and sweeter but similar to ruby. It grows in south Texas which is similar to the Florida panhandle in terms of cold. It's very close to an orange in sweetness and acidity but is a grapefruit and thus cold hardy.